New Hopes & Dreams

"It is not the mountains that we conquer, but ourselves..." ~ Sir Edmund Hillary

This weeks blog is a little different, as the main content has been adapted and taken from the author's note from Paulo Coelhos' 'The Alchemist'.

I was feeling particularly disheartened recently due to four specific reasons:
1. Missing my intended trip to Ireland to catch up with my friends was hard to take.
2. The frustration at the lack of a full diagnosis of my poor health.
3. The ongoing and stressful situation with my dispute with my ex-bank (more to follow next week).
4. My continual journey to find my spiritual home had come to a fork in the road, and I was unsure which path to take in my persuit for genuine happiness.

Reading the thoughts in the author's notes offered me renewed optimism, and a sense of hope and inspiration, which I felt should be shared with everyone...

The success of 'The Alchemist' has led to many journalists asking Paulo Coelho what's the secret behind the story. His only response has always been that he honestly doesn't know, other than like Santiago the shepherd boy, we all need to be aware of our personal calling.
A personal calling is the path chosen for us here on Earth. Whenever we do something that fills us with enthusiasm, we are following our legend. However, we don't all have the courage to confront our own dreams and hopes.
This is due to four obstacles that confront us, which we ourselves sometimes put in our own way.

First, we are told from a young age that everything we want to do is impossible. We grow up with this idea, and as the years accumulate, so too do the layers of prejudice, fear and guilt. There comes a time when our personal calling is so deeply buried in our soul as to be invisible...but it's still there.

The second obstacle is love.
We know what we want to do, but are sometimes afraid of hurting those around us by abandoning everything in order to persue our dream. We do not realise that love is just a further impetus, not something that will prevent us going forward, and that those who genuinely wish us well want us to be happy and are prepared to accompany us on that journey.

Fear of defeat is the third obstacle which we can meet on our path.
We who fight for our dream suffer far more when it doesn't work out, because we have staked everything on it and that the path of the personal calling is no easier than any other path, except that our whole heart is in this journey. Then we warriors of light must be prepared to have patience in difficult times and to know that the Universe is conspiring in our favour, even though we may not understand how.
Whether we like it or not, defeats happen and setbacks are a part of life. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.
Once we overcome our defeats we are filled with a greater sense of euphoria and confidence. In the silence of our hearts, we know that we are proving ourselves worthy of the miracle of life, and we can start to live with enthusiasm and pleasure.

The final obstacle is the fear of actually realising our dream for which we have been fighting all our lives.
Oscar Wilde said, "Each man kills the thing he loves."
The possibility of getting what we want can fill the soul with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all of the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to sacrifice in order to get this far.
But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you understand why you had to persevere so much, and you appreciate why you are so deserving of attaining it.


After reading this once again I realised that all experiences in life teach us something.
I firmly believe that we all get what we deserve...eventually.
I also believe that good things happen to good people.
And finally, I believe in karma and what goes around, comes around.
Nomadic Steve